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Prior to Federalist No. 17 I had never completely disagreed with any of the federalist papers. Unfortunately, in discussing the possibility of a national government becoming stronger than would be desirable, Alexander Hamilton completely missed on his guess that:
It will always be far more easy for the State governments to encroach upon the national authorities than for the national government to encroach upon the State authorities.
Hamilton admits his lack of vision by saying:
I confess I am at a loss to discover what temptation the persons intrusted (sic.) with the administration of the general government could ever feel to divest the States of the {authority which should belong to them.}
My own assessment of where Hamilton went wrong was that he imagined an electorate that was perpetually working to stay informed. Instead today we have an electorate that has been diluted from the original – adult males who own property – to include any citizen, male or female, over the age of 18. I don’t mean to suggest that we should raise the voting age again, or make property ownership a requirement again, but I think it is fair to note that anyone who happens to be 18 does not necessarily have the same interest or inclination to become informed in their vote as someone who has property ownership which is directly affected by the actions of their representatives. Maybe we should adopt some requirement of tax payment – thus excluding those who have reached the age of 18 but who are simply living with their parents and not taking any adult responsibilities.
In truth, I think the biggest culprit is not the change in voting requirements as the rise of a society that is constantly lulled into complacency by a media culture that is predominantly experienced through passive reception. That seems to create a feeling of disconnectedness where people don’t have any real connection to government except to hear whatever the media covers – and the media naturally focuses on the larger national government more than more local government.
This disconnection would explain why the following assertion by Hamilton does not hold true today:
. . . the people of each State would be apt to feel a stronger bias towards their local governments than towards the government of the Union; unless the force of that principle should be destroyed by a much better administration of the latter.
In Utah today we have a state government that is acclaimed to be among the most wisely managed and yet many of our citizens think of little beyond presidential elections and the elections of our state representatives at the federal level.